The award of class action certification is often the gateway for obtaining lifesaving systemwide judicial relief in broken correctional health care systems. It also can be the beginning of a decades-long, burdensome and...more

Some Courts Loosening Restrictions on Punitive Damages. The 1990s and 2000s saw many developments 9 restricting the frequency and size of punitive damages awards in tort litigation, including both state tort-reform...more

May 2014 brought an ordinary end to a series of extraordinary events, with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) settling an unprecedented proceeding against Craig Zucker, the former CEO of Buckyballs® manufacturer...more

In April, the Fourth Circuit ruled in Company Doe v. Public Citizen that a manufacturer could not hide behind a veil of secrecy even after successfully enjoining the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) from publishing...more

A new decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal will require the lower court to unseal court documents, revealing the identity of a manufacturer that claims it was falsely implicated in a consumer report....more

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rather forcefully reversed one of the key rulings of Maryland District Court Judge Alexander Williams, Jr. in the recent litigation involving the CPSC’s...more

Plaintiff sued Sony Online Entertainment, a publisher, developer, and seller of video games, for negligence and products liability, alleging that he suffered emotional distress as a result of his adult son’s addiction to...more

On January 21, 2014, objectors to a class action settlement over contamination from Monsanto Agent Orange herbicide filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari with the Unites States Supreme Court. The Petition asked the Court to...more

In the recent decision in Aleo v. SLB Toys USA, Inc., 466 Mass. 398 (2013), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) found that an $18 million punitive damages award based on gross negligence was not grossly excessive...more

In May 2013, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) took the unprecedented step of naming Craig Zucker in an administrative complaint against Maxfield and Oberton Holdings, LLC, the manufacturer of Buckyballs®, in...more

It’s déjà vu all over again. Taking a rather tattered page from the Bone Screw plaintiffs’ spectacularly unsuccessful playbook of a decade ago, at least some plaintiffs in the every-man-for-himself Pain Pump litigation are...more

We were just reading an interesting, relatively new, decision from our home Circuit, Reilly v. Ceridian Corp., 664 F.3d 38 (3d Cir. 2011), and our reaction to it wasn’t quite what most readers would expect. ...more

This is a post about one of our least favorite subjects – punitive damages. We had to conduct some research recently that we thought we’d share with you. It has to do with the lowest constitutional limit on punitive damages...more

When we convince a court that an action against one of our clients must be dismissed for failure to state a claim – say, for TwIqbal reasons – under Rule 12, we sometimes say that the plaintiff's case was so poor that s/he...more

On Wednesday, we discussed the relevant parts of pending tort reform legislation. Earlier in the month we updated our favorite federalist point, which is that federal courts should not issue expansive interpretations of state...more

The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing earlier this week on "Can We Sue Our Way to Prosperity?: Litigation's Effect on America's Global Competitiveness." Speakers included a public...more